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Multinationals Revisited holdings of U.S. dollars should not be used Review article to finance drawings. Thus, the relationship between usable currencies and readily en- cashable claims changed rather dramati- cally; at the end of November, the total of currencies considered usable was reduced to about SDR 10 billion, while reserve po- Multinationals sitions in the Fund were still close to SDR 15.5 billion, with the reduction in the re- revisited ' serve tranche position of the United States j^ being matched by increases in the posi- tions of the Federal Republic of Germany Paul Streeten and Japan as a consequence of the sale of their currencies by the Fund to the United The multinational is no longer so multifashionable. It is true that States. much is still being written about it, and this reviewer of some recent This broad outline of the determinants of books and articles on the subject (see box) succumbs to the Swift- the Fund's liquidity is subject to several ian thought that he who can make one word grow where there were I qualifications. On the demand side, while two before is a true benefactor of mankind. Yet, in spite of the con- ! some members holding claims that can be tinuing controversy, some of the steam has gone out of the debate. j readily encashed with the Fund are facing There is no longer the sharp separation between those who think ' deteriorating BOP situations, a substantial that what is good for General Motors is good for humanity and ! proportion of these claims are firmly held those who see in the multinational corporations the devil incorpo- f by members in strong BOP positions. On rated. | the supply side, if holdings of usable cur- rencies are low, the Fund can supplement I its liquid assets by borrowing. Although as Publications reviewed > a legal matter members cannot be required j to make loans to the Fund, there has been Jack Baranson, Technology and the Multinationals (Lexington, Lex- J^ readiness to do so at times when the ington Books, 1978). j Fund's liquidity has been under strain. In R.J. Barnet and R. Miiller, Global Reach: The Power of the Multi- | the past, the principal source of borrowing national Corporations (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1974). I has been the GAB under which the Group C. Fred Bergsten, Thomas Horst, and Theodore M. Moran, Ameri- i of Ten industrial countries undertook to can Multinationals and American Interests (Washington, Brook- ings Institution, 1978). ^ lend amounts totaling about SDR 6.6 bil- Thomas J. Biersteker, Distortion or Development? Contending Per- j lion to the Fund when one of them draws spectives of the Multinational Corporation (Cambridge, MIT Press, i on the Fund; for example, during 1977, the 1978). ' Fund arranged to borrow about SDR 2.9 Peter Evans, Dependent Development; the Alliance of State, Multi- billion in connection with stand-by ar- national, and Local Capital in Brazil (Princeton, Princeton Univer- I rangements for the United Kingdom and sity Press, 1979). I Italy. (See "Increasing the resources of the Lawrence G. Franko, "Multinationals: the End of U.S. Dominance," *• Fund: borrowing" by David Williams, Fi- Harvard Business Review (Nov.-Dec. 1978). ! nance & Development, September 1976.) David A. Heenan and Warren J. Keegan, "The Rise of Third World | In the case of the oil facility, the Fund bor- Multinationals," Harvard Business Review (Jan.-Feb. 1979). Harry G. Johnson, Technology and Economic Interdependence ; Crowed SDR 6.9 billion for the specific pur- (London, MacMillan Press, 1975). : pose of making BOP financing available to Sanjaya Lall and Paul Streeten, Foreign Investment, Transnationals, f members whose external positions had de- and Developing Countries (London, MacMillan Press, 1977). ' teriorated as a result of the increase in oil Sanjaya Lall, "Developing Countries as Exporters of Industrial Tech- * prices in late 1973. The last disbursements nologies," International Economic Development and Resource I under the oil facility were made in 1976. Transfer, Herbert Giersch, editor (Kiel, Institut fur Weltwirtschaft, ) The financing of this special facility from 1979). \ the Fund's own resources would have D. Lecraw, "Direct Investment by Firms from Less-Developed Coun- ! posed some difficulties; at that time BOP tries," Oxford Economic Papers (November 1977). UNCTAD Seminar Programme, Intra-firm Transactions and Their ! deficits were widespread, and relatively Impact on Trade and Development, May 1978. Report Series No. > few members were in positions that were 2, UNCTAD/OSG/174. sufficiently strong to justify the Fund using Paul Streeten, "Transnational Corporations and Basic Needs," in ' their currencies to finance drawings. Early Growth with Equity: Strategies for Meeting Human Needs, Mary ,m 1979 the Fund completed arrangements Evelyn Jegen and Charles K. Wilber, editors (New York, Paulist to borrow up to SDR 7.8 billion to finance Press, 1979). a new facility—the supplementary financ- Raymond Vernon, Sovereignty at Bay: The Multinational Spread of ing facility—that is intended to provide U.S. Enterprises (New York, Basic Books, 1971). supplementary financing in conjunction Louis T. Wells, Jr., "The Internationalization of Firms from Develop- j. with the use of the Fund's ordinary re- ing Countries" in Multinationals from Small Countries, Tamir Ag- sources to members facing payments im- mon and Charles P. Kindleberger, editors (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1977). ''balances that are large in relation to their Fund quotas. Finance & Development I June 1979 39 ©International Monetary Fund. Not for Redistribution The reasons for this lowering of the temperature are to be found ing, and real estate, bought into the Bulova Watch Company in the! in five recent trends that suggest that the role of multinational cor- United States. C.P. Wong of Stelux improved the performance ofj porations in development has to be reassessed. the U.S. company. There are other instances of Third World multH First, there has been a shift in bargaining power between multi- nationals that have aimed at acquiring shares in firms in develop- nationals and their host countries, greater restrictions on the inflow ed countries (Heenan and Keegan, 1979). ' of packaged technology, a change in emphasis from production to The data on the extent of developing countries' foreign invest-j research and development and marketing, among other factors, ment are inadequate and the evidence is anecdotal. A partial listing! that have increased the uncertainties of direct foreign investment. of major Third World multinationals in Fortune (August 14, 1978» As a result, there is some evidence that it has become the policy of contains 33 corporations with estimated sales in 1977 ranging from! multinational companies to shift from equity investment, ownership $500 million to over $22,000 million, totaling $80,000 million. of capital, and managerial control of overseas facilities to the sale If there is a challenge, it is no longer uniquely American; and if multinationals are instruments of neocolonialism, the instrument has been adopted by some ex-colonies, and at least one colonyj (Hong Kong), and is used against others. (Excluding mining and "many more nations are now competing with U.S. petroleum, Hong Kong is, for example, the second largest investor in Indonesia.) Neither developed nor developing countries are an^ multinationals in setting up foreign activities. ." longer predominantly recipients of multinationals from a single; home country. Fourth, not only do host countries deal with a greater variety ofj foreign companies, comparing their political and economic attrac- tions, weighing them against their costs, and playing them off of technology, management services, and marketing as a means against one another, but also the large multinationals are beingf to earn returns on corporate assets, at least in those countries that replaced by smaller and more flexible firms. And increasingly alter* have policies against inflows of packaged technology (Baranson, native organizations to the traditional form of multinational enter-! 1978). prise are becoming available: banks, retailers, consulting firms, and Second, many more nations are now competing with U.S. multi- trading companies are acting as instruments of technology transfer- nationals in setting up foreign activities, which means that the con- Fifth, some multinationals from developed countries have ac- troversy is no longer dominated by nationalistic considerations. commodated themselves more to the needs of the developingj Japanese and European firms figure prominently among the new countries, although IBM and Coca-Cola left India rather than perrnjt multinationals. The number of U.S. companies among the world's joint ownership. Centrally planned economies increasingly wel- top 12 multinationals declined in all of the 13 major industry groups come the multinationals, which in turn like investing there, partly! except aerospace between 1959 and 1976, whereas continental because "you cannot be nationalized." European companies increased their representatives among the Several distinguished authors, former U.S. Under Secretary of top 12 multinationals in 9 of the 13 industries, and the Japanese State George Ball, Professor Raymond Vernon, and Harry Johnson^ scored gains in 8 (Lawrence Franko, Harvard Business Review, among them, had predicted that sovereignty would be at bay and? Nov.-Dec. 1978). The reasons for this are to be found in the de- some of these authors even suggested that the nation state, con- cline of U.S. predominance in technology transfer; in the fact that fronted with large and ever more powerful multinationals, would foreign production follows exports, and exports from these coun- wither away. tries steadily rose; in the steady growth of European and Japanese Competition among nation-states for the economic favours of the cor-, capacity to innovate; and in the greater adaptability—both politi- poration and the xenophobic character of the nation state itself will pre-4 cally and economically—of these companies to the needs of host vent the formation of a conspiracy or cartel of nation-states to exploit the, countries.
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